Waiting for My Cats to D

Almost 40 here, 2 old fart felines- Chelsea (16) is diabetic with a number of itchy ailments, Shakespeare (17) has used the litter box about 3 times during his life- I've been cursed with the chore of rotating hand towels for his toilet leisure. And for the past 5 yrs or so, Chelsea has played kitty see - kitty do. Saves me a lot on the cost of litter, but I well make up for it with air deodorants and plug-ins as kitty urine smells 10x worse on a towel hung to dry while I wait for a full load to wash every 4-5 days. A friend asked me if I'd heard about Stacy's book, I had not but quickly picked up a copy and waited a while to read it, dreading the ending chapter of course. Since I am home all the time, very emotionally in tune and attached to these two cats- having spent more time in their presence than with any other living creature during my life, when I did read the book, it was like reading my own story mixed with a close friend's story. This in 2002, at a point when my cats were rotating sick days, and I figured it wouldn't be long. Well we don't always rotate sick days now, being a diabetic now myself- sometimes we are all having a sick day on the same day, but we pull each other through. If you are a cat lover, or ever taken care of a sick loved one, or in general a person with any kind of kindness and love in your heart, you will giggle, roll your eyes, tear up and break down- all within a few pages of each other even! Its a wonderful and touching book. I'm a guy that 17 years ago never thought I'd be in such a boat with these two old friends. As I STILL wait to start a new life once these guys are gone, we snuggle up to bed and I never regret a second of it, no matter what or how much I had to clean up today, or how bad one of them is smelling at the moment! :) Friends that tell me its time to put them down, don't see how as sick as one is one day, they bounce back the next day and play like the mighty hunters they once were. It is going to be a little longer, at least. Thank you Stacy! 2008 Update: My long-time buddies have been gone for almost a year now. I still miss them every single day, and treasure when they occasionally visit me in my dreams where they are healthy and vibrant again. I thank them for so many years of companionship and comfort, and I know one day I will be reunited with them somehow.

Having two 19 year old cats of my own, I was hesitant to buy this book, due to severe guilt at empathizing with the title. As my cats' 20th birthday quickly approaches, and I'm having to deal with the thought of losing my roommates, I sucked it up & bought a copy. I am so glad I did.This woman writes about her life in all its gory, mundane, hilarious detail. She is not model-pretty, with a line of men waiting to bed her, but she is real, funny, adventurous & loving and a bit hilariously obsessed with deathAnyone that lives with cats, especially aging ones, will not be able to stop laughing & crying as she writes about her devotion towards them & her guilt in regards to them. If you don't live with or even like cats, buy it anyway, you'll be glad you did.Well worth the read - I wish I had bought it when it had first come out, but I'm really glad I own it now. I will not be selling it, buy a new copy.

Stacy Horn is a 40-year-old New Yorker, strikingly aware that her life is almost over. In Waiting for My Cats to Die: A Morbid Memoir, Ms. Horn writes of her own personal experiences, past and present, hoping to find some comfort in the fact that she is eventually going to die. "We've all read about how men act out their midlife crises over and over and over. Yeah, yeah. What do women do? This book will show you. I've started to act out in all sorts of ways. My pain will be your amusement." Yet this book isn't just for middle aged women. We can all learn from this book about love and hope. Loss and fear. Life and death. The initial question most readers - including myself - ask is, "Why does she want her cats to die?" There is a severe misunderstanding here among cat-lovers of the world. Stacy adores her cats. She lives, breathes, and works for their very existence. Basically, her cats, Veets and Beams are all she has in the world. Once they die, then she can quit. Oddly enough, her felines are laden with medical problems. They are both diabetic, and Beams also has kidney disease. Stacy goes through extreme lengths to keep them alive, including insulin injections to them both, every twelve hours. I find this kind of love for a pet very endearing, and I admire Stacy for her immense dedication to them, even if it does seem a tad obsessive. Speaking of obsessions, Stacy is obsessed with death. "I keep coming back to death the same way I can't stop touching a sore tooth with my tongue to see if it still hurts. Death. Still terrifying? Yes. How about now? Yes. And now? Yes. Death is at the heart of the midlife crisis." She goes to every death movie, reads every death book. She even went through the belongings of an eighty-eight year old woman who died, finding the most obscure things - a seventy-something-year-old appendix, for example. Small, short chapters on death are scattered sporadically throughout the book. Stacy visits abandoned cemeteries and funeral homes housing forgotten ashes. She wants to "unearth the unremembered...because if I can resurrect these abandoned histories, I win." Meanwhile, when Stacy is actually living, runs a New-York-based internet company - Echo. She has been credited as one of the industry's first women to begin such a venture, and it has been around roughly ten years. She is constantly on the phone company's hit list, falling deep into debt, and desperately trying to sell Echo. In the end however, no sale transpires, and Stacy is still the owner. Taking numerous polls from her Echo users, she puts their statistics in the book. "Are you happy?," and "What do you miss the most from your youth?," being some questions that are asked. Waiting for My Cats to Die: A Morbid Memoir is such an insightful and interesting reflection, not just on the aspects of death, but life itself. It is THE reason why you are never to judge a book by its cover. What I enjoyed most about this book was how honest and straight-forward S

Laughed out loud. Then had to explain why I was laughing. Answered by giving the title of the book. Oh, the looks I received!On a more serious note, my thirteen-year-old cat that I loved beyond measure had just died. The book helped. Although, quoting from it, one thing is still true: "I want my cat back."